OT: Are you a reader? What do you read?
Call.Me.Ishmael
Rhode Island
... aside from TUSCL.
If you're a reader, then what do you read? Fiction, non-fiction, the funny pages? Be as specific or non specific as you want.
For me, I'm an avid reader. For fiction, I like horror, thrillers, and crime fiction with the occasional foray into science fiction. Authors that I'd recommend include Blake Crouch, Paul Tremblay, Joe Lansdale, and Elmore Leonard.
For non-fiction, I'm all over the place. Mostly I'm reading trade-oriented how-to stuff, but I'm also reading Sebastian Junger's "Tribe", which is very good.
If you're a reader, then what do you read? Fiction, non-fiction, the funny pages? Be as specific or non specific as you want.
For me, I'm an avid reader. For fiction, I like horror, thrillers, and crime fiction with the occasional foray into science fiction. Authors that I'd recommend include Blake Crouch, Paul Tremblay, Joe Lansdale, and Elmore Leonard.
For non-fiction, I'm all over the place. Mostly I'm reading trade-oriented how-to stuff, but I'm also reading Sebastian Junger's "Tribe", which is very good.
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36 comments
I am also into non-fiction books on war history, and history in general.
Malcom Gladwell
Most of Tom Clancy'a fiction and non- fiction from The Hunt for Red October through Rainbow Six, Submarine through Armored Cavalry; most of David Morrell's work, much of Richard Marcinko's earlier novels, including his autobiography; lots of Stephen King, especially The Dark Tower series, all of A Song of Ice and Fire to date; Einstein's Dreams, virtually everything Michael Crichton wrote, and many more I cannot remember offhand.
Non-fiction: Strong Men Armed, 13 Hours in Benghazi, Black Hawk Down, Not a Good Day to Die, The Hot Zone, American Sniper, Sole Survivor, Command and Control, Evolutions End, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and The User Illusion found out my (remembered favorites). I must confess to one guilty pleasure: The Harry Potter series.
But certainly Hillary Clinton and her conservative wing of the Democratic Party are not like this. She has always operated by going after conservative voters, going to the Right of Obama in 2008. The problem with her is that she is extremely non-liberal.
I've posted links to zillions of book. Most always non-fiction. Right now finishing up with:
https://www.amazon.com/Magia-Sexualis-Li…
Then to read:
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Teachers-W…
SJG
Then as far as my fledgling organization, we will have our own ongoing education and our own leadership in multiple technology industries. Our men and some of the women will be kept busy there. And then all of our men will also be kept busy getting fucked and sucked dry each day by stripper grade hotties, plus sometimes also bedding down with them.
But we don't send our women out to service outside people. And we never get money that way either. As many will have come from Strip Clubs and AMPs, they may still do what they do, but we don't involve ourselves in that, or get any of the money. The ones who live on our premises will have retired from such commercial practices. We don't have anything to do with promoting any form of prostitution, and we never get money from anything like that.
As far as influencing politics though, we certainly won't want to be calming people down. We will be organizing people so that they can make revolution and be effective. Just common crime and violence are not effective.
We will be getting people to totally reject alcohol, drugs, born again christianity, and psychiatric medications, and instead to work with us and start re-educating themselves, and to become politically conscious so they can file lawsuits against past abusers. For people who have had children in order to scapegoat and use them, we will be their worst nightmare, as they will be held accountable. And then the psychiatric system is going to get shredded, and the evangelical churches will be torn to pieces too.
And then as people who reject things like born again christianity and psychiatric medications and the self-reliance ethic are able to politically organize, we will be able to steer the overall politics way to the left, so that probably things come to resemble Sweden or the French Socialist Party.
Here is a directory. This used to be paper only, but now it is online.
http://www.ic.org/communities-magazine-h…
Map:
http://www.ic.org/directory/maps/
Mikeya02, what is the most coercive and gives the government the most power to control people in how they live does indeed seem to be this Libertarian Anti-Government Movement.
And then you take this further, saying that anyone who does not go along is a "sociopath".
What is an issue though is that most of these Intentional Communities don't last beyond the lives of their founders. That is, unless you also include Roman Catholic and Buddhist celibate communities. Those have lasted a long time, and with any end no where in sight.
One community which was anything but celibate which certainly attracted huge numbers was that of the Bagwan Shree Rajneesh. But his group never really worked once it left India. And it did turn into a dangerous cult.
Today something of it still survives though, back in India.
People are always giving up large degrees of arbitrary freedom in order to make these things work. But then, some are very happy in such groups. It all depends.
Keeping up with the Joneses and social conformity are all consumptive, and not everyone wants that to be all their life is about.
SJG
"I have the heart of a small boy. It's in a jar on my desk"
"Animal Farm may seem like it pertains to a Communist regime. But there are other ways of seeing it. . . .So you could say that just like in Animal Farm, these pigs [i.e. financial speculator] have taken over, and they keep finding new ways to legitimate their hold on power." -- NO. Animal Farm is clearly about the abuses of totalitarianism, whether it be Nazism or Communism. Orwell, who famously is conservatives' favorite socialist, was a defender of individual freedom who hated *any* form of totalitarianism and wrote about it in this great work.
" . . . especially since progressive income tax has been gutted . . . " -- NO. Though the top *federal* rate is "only* 39.6%, this ignores the facts that (a) many tax credits and deductions are phased out for the rich and (b) several high-tax states such as California and New York with top *state* rates of 10-12%, rich people pay an effective rate of 50-60% on their marginal dollar. Only an extreme leftist would find it fair that anyone should pay a marginal rate of over 50%!
"But certainly Hillary Clinton and her conservative wing of the Democratic Party are not like this. She has always operated by going after conservative voters, going to the Right of Obama in 2008. The problem with her is that she is extremely non-liberal." -- NO. Being a warmonger and in the pocket of Wall Street does *not* make Hillary a conservative by any stretch of the imagination. Also, running to the right of Obama in the 2008 primaries (though not on health care!) wasn't very hard to do . . . except in the wild imaginations of extreme leftists.
But certainly Hillary Clinton and her conservative wing of the Democratic Party are not like this. She has always operated by going after conservative voters, going to the Right of Obama in 2008. The problem with her is that she is extremely non-liberal.
As far as fiction I'm a big Cormac McCarthy fan, Blood Meridien is probably my favorite fiction book.
" . . . we certainly won't want to be calming people down. We will be organizing people so that they can make revolution and be effective."
"We will be getting people to totally reject alcohol, drugs, born again christianity, and psychiatric medications . . . and then the psychiatric system is going to get shredded, and the evangelical churches will be torn to pieces too."
" And then as people who reject things like born again christianity and psychiatric medications and the self-reliance ethic are able to politically organize, we will be able to steer the overall politics way to the left, so that probably things come to resemble Sweden or the French Socialist Party."
Elsewhere in his copious postings one can find multiple references to feeding Christians to lions.
Then in college, I took one class in English Composition. I did not have a liberal arts education. I took calculus and differential equations and linear algebra.
After college I just wanted to reading light novels. But lately I've been felling like I missed something. I bought a whole set of Steinbeck books at a garage sale. I'm trying to read them - but they're dry after being used to John Grisham.
Tax rates are much lower than they were during the country's period of strongest growth and greatest gains for working people, the Eisenhower - Kennedy era. And this makes sense as downward wealth transfers cause the money to circulate the fastest. Even Henry Ford had accepted that for this reason it was better to pay workers more.
Hillary ran pitching to conservatives. She was going into suburbs and often going after Roman Catholic voters, as they are usually a key swing vote. There were not the urban and low income voters who actually need to be brought back in. Hillary really gave Obama a run for his money. But after she was out, Biden became known as "Ambassador to Hillary Clinton Land."
Capitalism used to get its scapegoats in the immigrants and racial minorities used to do cheap labor and slave labor. As the need for labor is much less, but the need for scapegoats to keep the system in place is much higher, now Capitalism gets it scapegoats from the Middle-Class Family itself.
So we have a huge untouchable caste ( not anything like a class ) that lives on alcohol, drugs, born again christianity, and psychiatric medications. It is because these people have subsumed the self-reliance ethic, derived from original sin, that they are unable to organize and act.
In 1848 Marx said that the Lumpen Proletariat lacked political consciousness. That was how it looked to him. But 100 years later in Algeria, Frantz Fanon described the Lumpen Proletariat as Drug Dealers, Petty Thieves, Prostitutes, and Pimps, who lived on the perimeters of cities in shanty towns. They had been rejected from family and clan because of the ravages and dislocations of Capitalism. This is exactly how it is in San Jose California today. But Fanon said that the lumpens can indeed have political consciousness, and they can cause great disruption, which advances revolution.
I'm sure this is true. But what stops it are alcohol, drugs, born again christianity, and psychiatric medication, all being used to back up the self-reliance ethic, and to further harm our society's scapegoats.
Mr. Deuce, it is you and Mikeya02 who are sociopathic, inventing reasons why things should stay as they are, and demanding social conformity and deciding who is legitimate and who is not, and opposing what efforts are already being made for people to advance themselves.
SJG
Jeff Healey Band - "The Thrill Is Gone" - 10-09-03 - Toronto, Canada
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHSx-gsj…
More Books:
https://www.tuscl.net/postread.php?PID=4…
The book's last sentence is one of my faves of all the books I've read.
Philosophy and Spiritual Quest
by Joshua Ramey
Duke University Press, 2012
book looks extremely interesting, but it is still not very well disseminated.
SJG
Shinedown - Second Chance [OFFICIAL VIDEO]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbsDPbr8…